Google Begins Rolling Out Panda 4.0 Now

Matt Cutts have announced that Google is rolling out Panda 4.0 update starting today on 21st May 2014.

Google’s Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that they have released version 4.0 of the Google Panda algorithm.
Google’s Panda algorithm is designed to prevent sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google’s top search results.
But didn’t Google stop updating us on Panda refreshes and updates since they are monthly rolling updates? Yes, but this is a bigger update.
Panda 4.0 must be a major update to the actual algorithm versus just a data refresh. Meaning, Google has made changes to how Panda identifies sites and has released a new version of the algorithm today.
Is this the softer and gentler Panda algorithm? From talking to Google, it sounds like this update will be gentler for some sites, and lay the groundwork for future changes in that direction.
Google told us that Panda 4.0 affects different languages to different degrees. In English for example, the impact is ~7.5% of queries that are affected to a degree that a regular user might notice.
Here are the previous confirmed Panda updates, note, that we named them by each refresh and update, but 4.0 is how Google named this specific update:

1. Panda Update 1, Feb. 24, 2011 (11.8% of queries; announced; English in US only)
2. Panda Update 2, April 11, 2011 (2% of queries; announced; rolled out in English internationally)
3. Panda Update 3, May 10, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
4. Panda Update 4, June 16, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
5. Panda Update 5, July 23, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
6. Panda Update 6, Aug. 12, 2011 (6-9% of queries in many non-English languages; announced)
7. Panda Update 7, Sept. 28, 2011 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
8. Panda Update 8, Oct. 19, 2011 (about 2% of queries; belatedly confirmed)
9. Panda Update 9, Nov. 18, 2011: (less than 1% of queries; announced)
10. Panda Update 10, Jan. 18, 2012 (no change given; confirmed, not announced)
11. Panda Update 11, Feb. 27, 2012 (no change given; announced)
12. Panda Update 12, March 23, 2012 (about 1.6% of queries impacted; announced)
13. Panda Update 13, April 19, 2012 (no change given; belatedly revealed)
14. Panda Update 14, April 27, 2012: (no change given; confirmed; first update within days of another)
15. Panda Update 15, June 9, 2012: (1% of queries; belatedly announced)
16. Panda Update 16, June 25, 2012: (about 1% of queries; announced)
17. Panda Update 17, July 24, 2012:(about 1% of queries; announced)
18. Panda Update 18, Aug. 20, 2012: (about 1% of queries; belatedly announced)
19. Panda Update 19, Sept. 18, 2012: (less than 0.7% of queries; announced)
20. Panda Update 20 , Sept. 27, 2012 (2.4% English queries, impacted, belatedly announced
21. Panda Update 21, Nov. 5, 2012 (1.1% of English-language queries in US; 0.4% worldwide; confirmed, not announced)
22. Panda Update 22, Nov. 21, 2012 (0.8% of English queries were affected; confirmed, not announced)
23. Panda Update 23, Dec. 21, 2012 (1.3% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
24. Panda Update 24, Jan. 22, 2013 (1.2% of English queries were affected; confirmed, announced)
25. Panda Update 25, March 15, 2013 (confirmed as coming; not confirmed as having happened)

Source URL: http://searchengineland.com/google-begins-rolling-panda-4-0-now-192043

Official: Google Payday Loan Algorithm 2.0 Launched: Targets “Very Spammy Queries”

Google has confirmed they have released a new algorithm update to their Payday Loan Algorithm update over this weekend.

This algorithm specifically targets “very spammy queries” and is unrelated to the Pandaor Penguin algorithms. A Google spokesperson told us:

Over the weekend we began rolling out a new algorithmic update. The update was neither Panda nor Penguin — it was the next generation of an algorithm that originally rolled out last summer for very spammy queries.

This comes with at no surprise to most SEOs and Webmasters who watch the space. There was a tremendous of rumors and signals of a major update over the weekend, intensifying over the past couple days as webmasters began to look at their analytics and the update has continued to roll out through Google.

The original Payday Loan Algorithm launched just about a year ago on June 11, 2013. Back then, Google’s Matt Cutts told us the algorithm impacted roughly 0.3% of the U.S. queries, but Matt said it went as high as 4% for Turkish queries were Web spam is typically higher.

Google told us this specific update is an international rollout and it affects different languages to different degrees, but this impacts English queries by about 0.2% to a noticeable degree. Here is a video back when Matt Cutts of Google announced the update was coming back in 2013:

Source URL: http://searchengineland.com/official-google-payday-loan-algorithm-2-0-launched-targets-spammy-queries-192027